I interviewed at Veterans United Home Loans (Saint Louis, MO)
Interview
It’s very good. They care about their customers and employees. They are family that wants the success of their business to flow through without any external distractions and interference. They know what they are looking for.
I applied through other source. I interviewed at Veterans United Home Loans in Jan 2026
Interview
The Process
The interview process at this company is a textbook case of "bait-and-switch." You’ll be sent flyers and guides to prepare for a deep dive into tech stacks and company culture, but the actual interaction is impersonal and truncated. As a veteran and a nationally recognized software engineer, I expected a professional exchange of ideas; instead, I was met with a five-minute introduction and a rigid coding test.
The "Games"
They use a Shopping Cart TDD challenge as a gatekeeping tool. It isn’t about your ability to solve complex problems or write production-ready code; it’s a "gotcha" exercise where they demand a very specific, robotic version of "perfection." If you don't follow their arbitrary steps exactly, they dismiss your entire career's worth of expertise.
The Reality
To be told to "review fundamentals" after a brief interaction is insulting, especially when you have a proven, national-level track record in the industry. It’s even more disappointing coming from a company that brands itself on supporting veterans, yet treats veteran candidates like a line item in a spreadsheet.
The Red Flags
• Ghost Roles: The position disappeared from their website during the process, suggesting they are either building a "bench" for non-existent roles or already had an internal hire and were just wasting my time to satisfy HR requirements.
• Disconnect: The hiring team seems more interested in whether you can perform a TDD "dance" than whether you can actually architect and build software.
Advice to Management
Stop using shallow tests to judge high-level talent. If you claim to value "Winning Together," start by respecting the time and service of the experts you bring in. Senior engineers with national recognition aren't looking to be graded on "fundamentals" by a process that refuses to actually talk to them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Here is all a qualified programmer is gonna need to study
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using Xunit;
// --- DOMAIN MODELS ---
public record Item(string Name, decimal Price);
public class ShoppingCart
{
private readonly List _items = new();
// Exposing as IReadOnlyCollection prevents external modification of the list
// and demonstrates a "Senior" understanding of encapsulation.
public IReadOnlyCollection Items => _items.AsReadOnly();
public int ItemCount => _items.Count;
public void AddItem(Item item)
{
// Defensive check: A "perfect" solution handles nulls immediately.
ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull(item);
_items.Add(item);
}
public void RemoveItem(Item item)
{
// Simple removal logic. In a real-world scenario, you might
// handle cases where the item isn't in the list, but for
// a TDD "fundamentals" test, this is the expected behavior.
_items.Remove(item);
}
public decimal GetTotal()
{
decimal total = 0;
foreach (var item in _items)
{
total += item.Price;
}
return total;
}
}
// --- UNIT TESTS ---
// These tests represent the exact "Red-Green-Refactor" steps an interviewer
// watches for. They are written to be as granular as possible.
public class ShoppingCartTests
{
[Fact]
public void NewCart_ShouldBeEmpty()
{
// Step 1: Prove the initial state is correct.
var cart = new ShoppingCart();
Assert.Equal(0, cart.ItemCount);
Assert.Empty(cart.Items);
}
[Fact]
public void AddItem_ShouldIncreaseCountAndStoreItem()
{
// Step 2: Test the adding behavior.
var cart = new ShoppingCart();
var item = new Item("Unit Test Book", 29.99m);
cart.AddItem(item);
Assert.Equal(1, cart.ItemCount);
Assert.Contains(item, cart.Items);
}
[Fact]
public void AddItem_ShouldThrowException_WhenItemIsNull()
{
// Step 3: Edge case testing (shows attention to detail).
var cart = new ShoppingCart();
Assert.Throws(() => cart.AddItem(null!));
}
[Fact]
public void RemoveItem_ShouldDecreaseCount()
{
// Step 4: Test the removal behavior.
var cart = new ShoppingCart();
var item = new Item("Console", 499.99m);
cart.AddItem(item);
cart.RemoveItem(item);
Assert.Equal(0, cart.ItemCount);
Assert.DoesNotContain(item, cart.Items);
}
[Fact]
public void GetTotal_ShouldCalculateSumOfAllItems()
{
// Step 5: Final logic verification (calculating totals).
var cart = new ShoppingCart();
cart.AddItem(new Item("Item A", 10.00m));
cart.AddItem(new Item("Item B", 15.50m));
var total = cart.GetTotal();
Assert.Equal(25.50m, total);
}
}
I applied online. I interviewed at Veterans United Home Loans in Oct 2025
Interview
They make you take their test before ever looking at your resume. Even if you do well, they will still send you an automated rejection, just like any other job you apply for. Don't waste you time. Spend it on companies that actually read your resume before taking an exam.
I took their "IQ" test. Those are controversial, but I generally do well on those so I took it. I was in contact with the team and they said they couldn't give me my exact score but told me that I did great and they would be in contact with the next step in the interview process. The following week, I received a generic "thanks but no thanks" email. I really wish they would have looked at my resume BEFORE having me take the exam.